Riga

As the leaders of the NATO countries talk today and tomorrow about the worsening problems of Afghanistan, we hope they take a moment to look around them. This year's summit is in Riga, Latvia, an atmospheric old Baltic seaport - and a place that should serve to remind the assembled presidents and prime ministers that Afghanistan has a long and painful history as a wrecking ground of international ambitions. Plenty of Latvians have experience fighting in Afghanistan - as Soviet soldiers in the 1980s, when Moscow tried and ultimately failed to subdue the mujahedeen there.

Hrisostomos M. Rigas, Charlotte Services will be held on Tuesday evening, June 3rd at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 600 East Blvd., Charlotte, with family visitation beginning at 6:00 p.m. and the Trisagon starting at 7:00 p.m. The Reverend Father Michael Varvarelis and the Reverend Father Efstathoios Varvarelis will officiate. Baltimore, Maryland services will be held on Thursday, June 5 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 520 S. Ponca Street, Baltimore, MD 21224.

Len Latkovski was walking to an early morning mass at St Jacob's Cathedral when he first saw Soviet tanks in the streets of Riga, Latvia."It's unnerving to see them," he says. "But you know that the idea's intimidation. The most I saw at any one time was three or four. But it is unnerving."The Soviet crackdown on the Baltic countries had begun.If the tanks had appeared out of nowhere, it would have been even more shocking, says Latkovski, who teaches European history at Hood College in Frederick.

As the leaders of the NATO countries talk today and tomorrow about the worsening problems of Afghanistan, we hope they take a moment to look around them. This year's summit is in Riga, Latvia, an atmospheric old Baltic seaport - and a place that should serve to remind the assembled presidents and prime ministers that Afghanistan has a long and painful history as a wrecking ground of international ambitions. Plenty of Latvians have experience fighting in Afghanistan - as Soviet soldiers in the 1980s, when Moscow tried and ultimately failed to subdue the mujahedeen there.

RIGA, Latvia -- On Nov. 21, 1998, Galina Starovoitova and an aide climbed the darkened stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment house, where two killers carrying three guns awaited their chance to silence one of Russia's foremost democrats. Starovoitova, a member of parliament, was shot dead. The aide, Ruslan Linkov, was gravely wounded but survived. Two guns were dropped on the stairs. The third was not found. The killing was shocking and troubling. Starovoitova was one of the few democrats whose reputation was unblemished, a proud and courageous woman who believed in a quixotic fight for justice.

Even after nearly 60 years, the terrible despair of the young Jewish man from Riga in Latvia cries out from the pages of long-secret World War II spy files. Gabriel Zivial, 20, has made his way to Geneva, Switzerland, where he is debriefed on Oct. 9, 1942. Henry Louis Henriod, an aid worker, tells him that they want to continue relief activities. "Relief!" Zivial cries. "It is too late for that." "Out of 100,000 deported people," he says, "there are at present about 3,000 men and 300 women alive."

As communism crumbles and the Soviet Union shatters, the people of Latvia are savoring political independence for the first time in five decades.Latvians also are rekindling the religious faith extinguished by Moscow in 1940, when the Soviets annexed the Baltic country.To help in that rebirth of faith, Southern Baptists from Maryland and Delaware are undertaking a three-year mission program that would spiritually and materially assist the estimated 4,700 Latvian Baptists.More than 100 local Baptist ministers and lay people are expected to travel to the Latvian capital of Riga to help renovate churches recently released from Soviet control, install computer equipment at the office of the Union of Latvian Baptists, and conduct seminars on Sunday school instruction and pastoral counseling, among other activities.

Riga, Latvia -- In the downtown here, you cannot walk a city block without seeing them: Soviet officers in their pressed green uniforms and caps with a golden hammer-and-sickle emblem in front, clutching their briefcases, briskly walking to what appears to be an important meeting.I decided to follow some of them, just to see what important matters they were dealing with.I got a glimpse.There are many officers here, because the Baltics are literally an armed camp. By some estimates -- there are no official ones -- from 120,000 to 200,000 active military personnel are here, plus 80,000 who retired in the Baltics, presumably because the living standards are better.

President Clinton, like most of his fellow citizens, tends to take for granted and, thus, to underrate the achievement of the people who came together to make the United States of America. So, he overestimates the prospects of ''new'' democracies in the rest of the world.The triumph of American democracy is not that the majority rules; it is that multiple minorities are tolerated. Majority rule is easy to achieve, but it is not so easy to prevent the majority from disenfranchising, suppressing, driving out or killing minorities.

Hrisostomos M. Rigas, Charlotte Services will be held on Tuesday evening, June 3rd at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 600 East Blvd., Charlotte, with family visitation beginning at 6:00 p.m. and the Trisagon starting at 7:00 p.m. The Reverend Father Michael Varvarelis and the Reverend Father Efstathoios Varvarelis will officiate. Baltimore, Maryland services will be held on Thursday, June 5 at 11:00 a.m. at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, 520 S. Ponca Street, Baltimore, MD 21224.

NEW YORK -- Former Adelphia Communications Corp. operations chief Michael Rigas, whose father and brother were sentenced to prison for an accounting scandal that drove the company into bankruptcy, pleaded guilty yesterday to falsifying records. Rigas, 51, averted a retrial on 15 securities fraud charges by pleading guilty to a lesser count. He could received up to three years in prison. He admitted he falsely stated that he made a "reasonable inquiry" to verify that family members had supplied money to buy company stock in 1999.

NEW YORK - Adelphia Communications Corp. founder John Rigas was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison and his son, Timothy, the firm's chief financial officer, was sentenced to a 20-year term for what the sentencing judge called "one of the largest frauds in corporate history," stealing some $100 million from the company for their personal use and deceiving investors. U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand noted that both men could have faced life in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, but said John Rigas' age and ill health warranted a lesser term.

COUDERSPORT, Pa. - Adelphia Communications Corp.'s founding Rigas family agreed yesterday to give up board control and transfer almost $2 billion in assets to the cable-television company, a person familiar with the matter said. The assets will help offset $2.3 billion in company loans to the family that sparked a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The Rigases agreed to cede two of their five seats on Adelphia's nine-member board, the person said. Adelphia, facing U.S. grand jury investigations in two states and a possible Nasdaq delisting, still needs $1 billion in financing to avoid a bankruptcy until it can sell assets, the person said.

Even after nearly 60 years, the terrible despair of the young Jewish man from Riga in Latvia cries out from the pages of long-secret World War II spy files. Gabriel Zivial, 20, has made his way to Geneva, Switzerland, where he is debriefed on Oct. 9, 1942. Henry Louis Henriod, an aid worker, tells him that they want to continue relief activities. "Relief!" Zivial cries. "It is too late for that." "Out of 100,000 deported people," he says, "there are at present about 3,000 men and 300 women alive."

RIGA, Latvia -- On Nov. 21, 1998, Galina Starovoitova and an aide climbed the darkened stairwell of her St. Petersburg apartment house, where two killers carrying three guns awaited their chance to silence one of Russia's foremost democrats. Starovoitova, a member of parliament, was shot dead. The aide, Ruslan Linkov, was gravely wounded but survived. Two guns were dropped on the stairs. The third was not found. The killing was shocking and troubling. Starovoitova was one of the few democrats whose reputation was unblemished, a proud and courageous woman who believed in a quixotic fight for justice.

RIGA, Latvia -- A bomb goes off outside the only remaining synagogue here; no one is hurt. A Soviet secret police agent who came here in 1945 to build communism now sits in a cell in the same building in which he once worked, charged with genocide. A monument to the soldiers who died fighting the Nazis is defaced. Veterans of the Waffen SS gather for a reunion and are greeted by the head of the armed forces and speaker of the parliament.If it seems as though Latvians, in their seventh year of independence from Moscow, are unable to shake off the terrible years of the 1940s, they reply that their big neighbor to the east appears to be unable to embrace the present.

NEW YORK -- Former Adelphia Communications Corp. operations chief Michael Rigas, whose father and brother were sentenced to prison for an accounting scandal that drove the company into bankruptcy, pleaded guilty yesterday to falsifying records. Rigas, 51, averted a retrial on 15 securities fraud charges by pleading guilty to a lesser count. He could received up to three years in prison. He admitted he falsely stated that he made a "reasonable inquiry" to verify that family members had supplied money to buy company stock in 1999.

RIGA, Latvia -- A bomb goes off outside the only remaining synagogue here; no one is hurt. A Soviet secret police agent who came here in 1945 to build communism now sits in a cell in the same building in which he once worked, charged with genocide. A monument to the soldiers who died fighting the Nazis is defaced. Veterans of the Waffen SS gather for a reunion and are greeted by the head of the armed forces and speaker of the parliament.If it seems as though Latvians, in their seventh year of independence from Moscow, are unable to shake off the terrible years of the 1940s, they reply that their big neighbor to the east appears to be unable to embrace the present.

President Clinton, like most of his fellow citizens, tends to take for granted and, thus, to underrate the achievement of the people who came together to make the United States of America. So, he overestimates the prospects of ''new'' democracies in the rest of the world.The triumph of American democracy is not that the majority rules; it is that multiple minorities are tolerated. Majority rule is easy to achieve, but it is not so easy to prevent the majority from disenfranchising, suppressing, driving out or killing minorities.

Riga, Latvia -- In the downtown here, you cannot walk a city block without seeing them: Soviet officers in their pressed green uniforms and caps with a golden hammer-and-sickle emblem in front, clutching their briefcases, briskly walking to what appears to be an important meeting.I decided to follow some of them, just to see what important matters they were dealing with.I got a glimpse.There are many officers here, because the Baltics are literally an armed camp. By some estimates -- there are no official ones -- from 120,000 to 200,000 active military personnel are here, plus 80,000 who retired in the Baltics, presumably because the living standards are better.